


They Stop When We Meet

by strawberryhours



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Abandonment, Angst, Angst with an unhappy ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Drinking, F/F, Ghost! Quynh, Post-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporary Character Death, Unless I write more, lore development
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:40:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26941540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberryhours/pseuds/strawberryhours
Summary: "As you well know, Booker, we don’t see things exactly or clearly through the dreams, we sense strong emotions, great feats, and tragedies. They are mere impressions of our lives. Difficult to use to find a person without context.After decades had passed and I had tired of dying, I began to no longer care. Yes, my body wanted me to live, but my mind did not. In that state, the two begin to fracture.I found my mind began to wander very far away from my body. I began to see her during my deaths as well as during my dreams.”A different take on “We dream of each other. They stop when we meet.” regarding Quynh, Booker, and eventually Nile.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 3
Kudos: 36





	They Stop When We Meet

“Booker,” said a voice of a woman who by all reason shouldn’t be able to exist across from him, “It’s nice to finally meet you”

She leans casually against the counter of his latest safe house, eyes trained on him rather than the gun he has pointed at her, as she takes a sip of water out of one of the only two glasses that he owns. She shouldn’t be here, and it wasn’t simply because of the newly reinforced need for anonymity after his latest betrayal.

Last time he had seen her had been when he last slept two days ago. Waking from another nightmare of her eternal imprisonment, her constant and never ending pain, he had a renewed energy to go and get blackout drunk. Wandering from bar to bar to park, he finally resigned himself to the idea of going home. Only his house wasn’t empty when he got there.

He keeps his gun trained on her. The logistics of her ability to be here run through his head. He notes her modern state of dress, her well manicured and healed hands. The depth of her eyes, so similar to Andy’s in the ways they speak volumes of years lived and died.

Two days wasn’t enough to escape and get to him. Was he out for longer than he thought?

“You shouldn’t be here.” He says stupidly.

She looks between him and his weapon with a raised eyebrow, “Now, is that anyway to treat one of your oldest friends?”

He laughs bitterly, “If you’re looking for revenge you’re a bit too late.”

She tilts her head at him and pushes herself off from the counter, “Now, what is it that you think I know of you?

He shoots for honesty. If she wanted to kill or capture him he’d be dead already. “I’ve betrayed the others. I let them get captured. I let Andy get hurt.”

At the mention of Andy her facade breaks and she inhales as if pained.

He looks clearly into Quynhs eyes, “Any punishment you seek to give them, please know that they’ve suffered enough.”

Then, he looks away in shame, “They’ve escaped but I haven’t done anything good.”

Her voice cuts through his deprecation and brings his gaze back to her face. She’s kept her reaction neutral but if he didn’t know any better he’d say she looks sympathetic “I know of your betrayal, Booker.”

He looks at her guilty “How is that?”

‘Why don’t we sit down for this.” she says, moving towards him.

The grip on his gun tightens on instinct before he remembers himself and gestures for Quynh to sit, tucking his gun into the back of his pants. He takes a seat as well and then freezes at Quynhs piercing stare.

She searches his face quite seriously. Then, nodding like she’s found something acceptable in there, she leans forward, both hands resting gently around her glass.

“You and I have a connection, as we all do before we meet. I wish I could say that feeling what you felt was what kept me alive all these years. But that would be a lie.” She smiles carefully at him, and Booker is hit with another reminder of Andy. “In fact, you made me feel worse.”

Booker swallows “Alright,”

“You have to recognize that the absolute absurdity of our situation is something that I got over years ago. Dying as I did absolutely alone before she found me. I had decided nothing seemed to make sense anymore and if I was cursed to die forever, well, there was comfort in that certainty”

She considers him, “We heal, but that may just be the problem.”

“Booker, I’m here because I want to tell you a story few people on earth know, with a conclusion that I’ve never shared with anyone else. After all, I think that you owe me at least that.” Her gaze pierces through him.

He nods, pained that she knows him in this way and honored that she trusts him even marginally “I understand”

She looks off into the distance and he watches as she circles the top of her glass with a well manicured nail, healed without a blemish after 500 years of clawing at metal. She takes her time starting but he knows better than to interrupt. Finally she speaks.

“I know that you have worries but in many ways I have had too much of my time wasted to aim for revenge.

I know that she’s sorry. I have seen her. You forget that while my nightmares plagued you, I was the one living them. you forget that you were my only eyes into the world and you were the only one who knew anything about me. What were you planning on doing once your gamble paid off? Dying? Leaving a poor old woman to lose all sense of connection to the real world”

Booker swallows “I-”

Quynh holds a hand up, “Again Booker, I am not here for revenge and I am not here for an apology. I am here so someone, anyone, knows what happened to me. Give me that, give me a voice, Booker.”

He looks her over. Here was the woman that he tried so hard to replace. He knew he never wanted to be her, after the fate she had, but there was an emptiness where she should be among the group, one that over the years he began to realize that he would never live up to filling.

Realizing she was waiting for an answer he clears his throat and croaks out “Of course.”

She looks relieved. “Good.” She looks back out past him and begins.

\-------------------

“I have had many beginnings, my birth, my first death, and then my first life." Quynh speaks slowly at first, trying to gauge how to clearly tell her story. She knew all the pieces and the ending by heart but she was still trying to explore how best to share it with the too familiar stranger in front of her.

She decides on a thread and begins to let it unravel, "My first life was remarkable only in the sense that any mortal life it’s; it was a gift filled with opportunity that you had to be lucky enough to come by or to die trying. I had a good life, a number of children who lived well into adulthood, and was amazing in battle." She smiles at this, she had always tried to compete with Andromache as to who was the better warrior, bets settled in the end with blood and romance.

"But, as it is for all warriors, a double edged blade. The more battles you fight the better you become, the more invincible you believe you are and the more mistakes you make. Like all of us, I died in a fight for my life. And like us all, I lost."

She sees Booker swallow harshly at this.

"But then I came back to life. I became amazing in battle in wartime and I had a beautiful family in times of peace. I dreamt of a woman, who like me would not stay down. And when enough of my family had passed on, so many generations having passed that my memory was all that held them to my present, I moved on. I continued my battle elsewhere, but at once I was betrayed. For a few bits of gold I was left out in the desert to die. Only, I could not do it only once and be done with. I had to keep dying over and over, and likely forever.”

My only hope was this woman who I had dreamt of, one who I wasn’t even sure was real. Our dreams were our only connection and my only key to the outside world. Additionally, as you well know Booker, we don’t see things exactly or clearly through the dreams, we sense strong emotions, great feats, and tragedies. They are mere impressions of our lives. Difficult to use to find a person without context.

After decades had passed and I had tired of dying, I began to no longer care. Yes, my body wanted me to live, but my mind did not. Staying in that state the two began to fracture."

She searches for any recognition in Booker's eyes but, seeing none, she continues.

"I found my mind began to wander very far away from my body. I began to see her during my deaths as well as during my dreams.”

Grasping at description beyond reach, Quynh states, "These two experiences were… different. The dreams were hazy, they were feelings and impressions of the world as she saw them. The deaths however... they were as if I was standing there next to her. I couldn’t say how long I would spend with her during each death, as time had lost all meaning out in the desert. And, I didn’t know if I was simply watching her memories or if I was truly there with her. I liked to imagine that I was there, though I could affect no change in her world. But in these deaths I could watch time pass, from the changing of the sun over her head. I would wander the world near her, searching for me.

I myself didn’t know if this search would come to fruition, but I traveled alongside her nonetheless. I rode horseback beside her, I climbed mountains and walked paths and ran quickly beside her. I laid beside her as she slept and I waited for her to find me."

She smiled at the memory, "Before these travels with her I had no interest in finding her. But I was now truly fascinated with this woman who seemed so hardened by the world, but filled with a flicker of hope at the prospect of meeting another like her. It made me more willing to be found.

As I gained my resolve I would try new things, I would send her images of where I was but, as I could only see sand for miles, it seemed to do no good. The images we dream of are without sound. But, during my deaths I started to whisper around her. I told her the names of the desert I had entered, I told her my last known place, I told her my name. And with that last reveal she seemed to have heard me.

While she could not see me and we could not hold a conversation, something had finally gotten through to her. With that I was pulled back to myself, I could no longer reach her because I had expended too much energy just to tell her my own name. I continued to die for many decades, unable to see her in my deaths, but I had felt her hope and knew she would prevail.

And finally, her face appeared above me. And this was so different from before. When I could see her in my deaths I wasn’t really there. But this time, she looked straight at me."

Though it was her own story, Quynh still breathed a sigh of relief at the memory.

"When Andromache stepped between me and the burning sun, casting blissful shade after so long without and looked directly into my eyes, I knew I would take her here with me over simply haunting her any day. And when I coughed up at her and died one more time for good measure, I did not picture myself following Andromache, unseen. In fact, I did not dream at all.”

Quynh smiles and then sighs, bringing herself back to reality and Booker, the only person who's mind she had been able to see into until recently for the last 500 years, now on the cusp of realizing her true fate.

She smiles sadly at him “I think you understand by now what has happened but as I said, I needed to tell my story so I will ask you to listen to the rest.”

“When Lykon became like us Andromache and I both dreamt of him and he of us, but during that time with Andromache at my back, our deaths were few and far between. Even after his loss and with the addition of Yusuf and Niccolò I did not experience what I had with Andromache.”

Quynh takes a deep breath, “And then I was lost. And all I had for 300 years were my own thoughts and my own silent screams. My own anger and my own rage at the world, at my family, at myself. I have died without revive far more than anyone ever in existence. You are an anomaly but I am a tragedy.

All I had was silence for what I now know to be 300 years, I saw a young man betray his nation and fail at his escape and my apologies, Booker, but more importantly than you, I saw Andromache again.”

Quynh recalls these facts clinically but she is certain that Booker doesn’t miss the tremor in her voice.

“She was different than I remembered. Harder. More removed from the world. Similar to the woman I had first seen in my dreams but now aimless, with no real destination in mind.

When I had been lost I thought she must have died. Why else would she not have found me. I pictured her in a fate similar to my own, separated and imprisoned. One unable to reach the other as much as her soul yearned for her to do so, trapped as we both were. But when you were reborn I saw that was not the case.

And for many years I didn’t get the opportunity to discover why, trapped as I were alongside you, who had chosen to forsake our drive to save the world and remain with your family. I cannot blame you too harshly, for I did the same in your place. But after years of drowning you had denied me air by choosing to remain separate from my family.

I spent much of that time, wondering why, if she had not been trapped similarly, did she not find me. Of course the first time she had insight to my thoughts and thereby my location. She did not even know of my existence until your exile from your last remaining family member when you finally asked about the woman you were dreaming about. I remember she was cold to you for years for that, pained as she was during that time. What I now see as anger at herself for not asking more questions when you first met.

I waited with you for a long time and I tried to whisper to you my last known place, but unlike Andromache you never seemed to see me.

So after years with you I disappeared to go back to drowning. There was nothing for me on the surface as I had been all but forgotten.”

Booker shakes his head vigorously “You were never forgotten Quynh, we never forgot you for a moment”

She smiles lightly back at him “Still I thought what was the point of calling for help if no one else cared to find you?

I would’ve believed that you had forgotten for the rest of my eternity but as always fate has other plans. Trapped in my grief and rage as I was, the rebirth of Nile was no more than a wisp of recognition against my subconscious. And when she fell asleep and I saw the faces of my oldest friends through new eyes I could give her nothing back but my desperation.

And whether I meant to or not, I appeared beside her as she asked about me. Perhaps now I had met someone who would not give up on me like you all had. I didn’t want to get my hopes up but I watched with a certain sort of desperation while Andy betrayed me. Lying about me to Nile. Calling me no more than a soldier while she still wore my life around her neck."

Quynh takes a shaking inhale and scrubs a tear from her face.

"I wanted to follow, I wanted to demand the answers I so deserved. Why, if they loved me, had they abandoned me?

But my bond was not as strong to Nile and I felt myself rooted to spot, looking at you, Booker. Who looked to regret something deeply. I didn’t understand, so I stayed with you and looked upon my old friends faces. And, when soldiers burst the door open and shot a grenade into you I was all of a sudden in two places at once. Watching in front of you and also inside of you. Sensing your true feelings. Your betrayal.”

Quynh lets out another ragged breath, “I thought few things could hurt me after so long imprisoned but the fact that not only had all forgotten of me but you would subject the others to the same fate that cursed me for eternity...

Her eyes tracked the tears down Bookers face, but he let them fall without notice, gaze glued to her.

"I screamed like I never had before. There isn’t much worse than losing that which you didn’t even know you had left." She tells him honestly.

"I stayed with you. I watched Andromache in the abandoned mine we had found with Yusuf and Niccolò once we had pulled them from their battle grounds, so young were they yet. And now here was Nile undergoing the same initiation. Yusuf, Niccolò, and myself, nowhere to be found. The lovers separated and destroyed. Your doing. So I did not truly desire to follow Andromache any more, when she left a place, previously a home to me, now filled with items I found unrecognizable. For they were gathered in my absence. I stayed because I did not trust you with Nile. If you would betray your oldest friends then what might you do to a girl you’ve just met. Who had no more in common with you than not being able to die.

I have felt many times over the years that that is the way you perceive many of us. You let jealousy feed you when you see Joe and Nicky, as you refer to them, together. Not realizing the sacrifices that they’ve had to make to remain together throughout all these years. The deaths they've had to endure and the times they had to chose between innocents and each other. You look at my Andromache and you feel a kinship because you have both betrayed your wives by living longer lives than them. But neither of you realize that our biggest curse is simply that you are unreachable.

In that cave I was so far removed from in time, I saw your remorse. I heard you say that your family thought you weak and selfish and that you didn’t love them enough. I realized the grudge I had been holding against my own family and knew that there must be some reason, any reason, that I was not privy to as to why Andromache would refuse to speak of me honestly.

And luckily you hid in trees surrounding the area Nile and Andromache leaned against their vehicle and discussed what their next steps were and we watched Andromache admit that she had broken her promise to me. With her renewed determination to not let that happen to anyone else, I realized that that was most of what I had needed to hear.

After all this time, I needed an acknowledgement that she had given up and that she was sorry. And with that, I had found a new sense of stress that you had betrayed them. But, unable to help, I found that I no longer wanted to see what had happened. I sunk back into myself, only to be ripped out of my torment once more as Nile was shot down in the stark white hallways of your prison. She held her breath as they searched her, pretending to still be dead, and I willed them to not notice her gentle breathing, But she’s good, she knew not to gasp back to life, but to center herself before destroying the rest.

I floated again until she, deciding that Andy’s axe wasn’t fast enough, pushed the man who you had been captured by out of the window using her own body. She came to in the remains of a vehicle and you all helped her recover from such a gruesome yet heroic death. You were exiled, I take it, and now I am here.” She finishes her story, tear tracks now dried and waits for Booker to speak.

\---------

“But how,” Booker asks disbelieving “How if you couldn’t even get a message to me, are we able to talk now?”

She leans back, the tension she had held relaying the story, all but zapped from her, “With there being two of you who I haven’t met yet, I have a more tangible connection to the outside world.

He nods, thinking it over.

“You are also now lonely enough to see me.” Quynh adds amusedly.

Booker starts, embarrassed.

“I think you can see me now because the idea no longer upsets you like it did before. You are willing to see me because you have no one else left.” She expands, though seemingly not insulted.

Booker can see a visible difference about Quynh now that she has finished her story. She looks as if a weight has been lifted off of her both metaphorically and physically, for the edges around her have started to blur.

He leans across the table and holds out her hand. She looks it in surprise and then laughs. She takes his hand in hers and he feels her strong grip and the painful cold of her fingers.

“Please, tell me where I can find you.” he begs.

She shakes her head “I still do not know. It’s dark and it’s painful. The sheer pressure of the water is enough to keep me down, if not just the chamber I’m trapped in.”

"Do you not see when you leave to come here?”

“No, I am simply there and now here. I don’t try to betray myself with hope when I know there is none. I will spend the rest of my days drowning. I know this because I am well acquainted with death, even with Andromache’s years before me. I still have experienced the most deaths and rebirths of any person in all of human history.”

“You can’t just give up.”

“Booker…”

He grips her hand back tightly, trying to convey his sense of urgency. “No, listen to me, I’ve already gone down that path, just waiting for it to end isn’t an option. Yes I will tell your story, yes I will remember you but what do you think the others will do when I tell them I saw you and did nothing?”

She laughs “I am sorry to give you this burden but I believe it is just penance. I would appreciate it if you tell Yusuf and Niccolò that I do not blame them and I wish them all the best. Nile that she while she is still new she will be better than all the rest of us. And Andromache… if you could tell her, that I’m still with her until the end.” she closes her eyes remorsefully “That would be very helpful, Booker.”

“Wait, Andy. Do you know?” Booker asks in a panic.

“Do I know what?” she says eyes still closed and the edges around her fading.

“She’s lost her immortality”

Quynhs eyes fly open.

“She’s mortal” he chokes out.

And Quynh disappears.

**Author's Note:**

> Hiiiiii thanks for reading :)))))))))))
> 
> Check out my Tumblr if u want it's oldguardsideblog.tumblr.com 
> 
> This might be part of a longer series but idk! 
> 
> I think I covered everything, but please let me know if there's anything else I need to tag! Okay, love you!


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